AVG Rescue CD: Powerful, Useful, and Free

What makes it so powerful and necessary (besides the fact it's free) is its ability to scan PCs that have been rendered unbootable or compromised in such a way that anti-virus protection is unusable.

AVG has come out with a new tool in the fight against viruses. It's the AVG Rescue CD, and what makes it so powerful and necessary (besides the fact it's free) is its ability to scan PCs that have been rendered unbootable or compromised in such a way that anti-virus protection is unusable.

An admission: I am "tech support" for friends and family. I've gone after dozens of machines infiltrated with lots of nasty stuff. Nearly every machine I've nursed to health already had virus protection onboard. In my opinion (and it's only my opinion), antivirus software is little protection against a naive user--the most likely entrance for malware.

AVG's Rescue CD is used after infection. It is downloaded as an ISO file, burned to a CD or thumb drive, then executed at power up. Your computer boots into Linux, an environment a virus won't run in! AVG then automatically mounts your hard drives and searches for an Internet connection to find any needed updates.

Just in case this all makes your head swim, AVG has a pretty decent
video tutorial. OK,
maybe "decent" is the wrong word. Truth is, it's creepy, because the
English narration from this Czech company is synthesized. The voice is
good enough to fool you for a few seconds and then... well, it's just
creepy. It pronounces "scan" as "skin."

Rescue scanning is the most useful piece of this download, but there's
more.